The World Class Leaders Show: The CEO leadership podcast for leaders who solve big problems and build better futures.

Andrea Petrone
  • 5.0 (17)
  • Management
  • Updated Weekly

If you’re a CEO or senior executive, your challenges don’t sound like “I need more leadership tips.” They sound more like: “Why am I still carrying this company on my shoulders?” “Why doesn’t my top team own the strategy the way I do?” “How do I challenge the board or investors without blowing up the relationship?” “How do we build a company that still matters in 10 years, not just hit this year’s numbers?” The World-Class Leaders Show is the CEO leadership podcast built for those questions. Hosted by Andrea Petrone – A Global Influencer, CEO Whisperer, WIley Author, Executive Coach and Speaker – the show goes deep into what it really takes to lead at the top: using power well, doing the identity work of leadership, and making the big decisions that shape the future of your company. Each episode brings real CEO stories and the best business thinkers in the world to the table. You’ll hear how sitting and former CEOs, chairs, and C-suite leaders tackle the biggest business problems of our time – growth, culture, strategy execution, transformation, technology, risk, and talent – and how they stay true to who they are while doing it. You’ll use this podcast to: Get your executive team truly aligned, so you stop re-fighting the same battles in every meeting. Turn strategy into a small set of clear priorities and behaviours your people actually execute. Hold your ground with boards, investors, regulators, and powerful internal stakeholders – and still move the agenda forward. Use your voice and position with more clarity and impact, so people know what you stand for and where the company is going. Find fresh inspiration and language to build a better future for your organization, your people, and the markets you serve – without losing yourself in the role. Featuring leaders from Fortune companies and some of the best thinkers in the world (like Amy Edmondson, Adam Bryant, James Keyes), the show is known for its richness, depth, and straight talk. Ranked in the top 5% of podcasts globally, it’s followed by thousands of CEOs and senior executives who want more than recycled ideas and surface-level conversations. If you care about solving real business problems, shaping the future, and doing the inner work required to lead at the very top, this podcast is for you. Subscribe to The World-Class Leaders Show and upgrade both your leadership – and the future you’re building. For ongoing CEO insights and behind-the-scenes context from each episode, follow Andrea Petrone on LinkedIn.

  1. 3d ago

    259 - Most CEOs Don't Know What AI Really Is! Ft. Don Tapscott

    Most CEOs think AI means ChatGPT or a few tools in the supply chain. Don Tapscott says they're missing the biggest shift: personal AI agents that will become an extension of every employee, customer, and leader. In this episode of The World Class Leader Show, Andrea Petrone talks with Don Tapscott, one of the world's leading authorities on technology in society, about "Identity AI," why leaders need to stop building an "AI strategy," and who should own and be accountable for the AI agents acting on our behalf. 🔑 IN THIS EPISODE Why "AI is not what you think it is" What Identity AI is, and why it changes how every company runs Why Don says "we're creating gods," and what could go wrong Why personal AI must be self-sovereign, not owned by Big Tech Why companies need a strategy where AI is part of everything, not a separate "AI strategy" Who is accountable when AI agents make decisions ⏱ TIMELINE 0:00 Trailer 0:53 How to see a technology shift before everyone else 3:59 What separates leaders who adopt from those left behind 4:42 The "new technology order" and rebuilding a country for AI 8:13 Paradigm shifts and the leadership crisis 11:08 What is Identity AI, and why care now? 14:19 Is it scary? "We're creating gods" 17:56 Why personal AI agents must be decentralized 21:30 What CEOs should actually do in the next 12 months 26:56 The biggest mistakes leaders make with AI 29:15 Who is accountable when AI agents decide? 32:38 Where to find Don's work 📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now. 👉https://reinventionatthetop.com/preorder Order the book before 22 October and get the companion toolkit plus a seat in a private live session with Andrea. 🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 📩 NEWSLETTER Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/ Connect with Andrea Petrone LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Connect with Don Tapscott LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dontapscott/    💬 QUESTION FOR YOU Do you think your leadership team really understands what AI is? Tell us in the comments. #AI #DonTapscott #Leadership #AILeadership #ArtificialIntelligence #IdentityAI #AIAgents #FutureOfWork #CEO #DigitalTransformation #WorldClassLeaderShow

  2. Sep 24

    258 - How Great CEOs Lead Their Board Instead of Managing It

    Sunday night. A CEO I work with is still at his desk building the deck every chart, every question anticipated. By Monday he'll walk in armoured. And he told me he still dreads it. Every single time. So I said: that deck isn't managing your board. It's managing your fear. Your board is the one room where the power is inverted, and that single fact turns leaders into defendants. Covering every base feels like diligence. It's fear wearing a suit, and the board can smell it. The harder you work to look invulnerable, the less they trust you, a very large deck doesn't signal command, it signals anxiety. So they lean in, dig deeper. The thing you did to feel safe is the thing that makes them circle. Underneath it is one confusion: governance is not relationship. If the quarterly rhythm is the only time you engage your board, you haven't got a relationship. You've got a series of exams with the people who can end your career. The best CEOs have flipped it. Their board meetings are almost boring, because everything real happened outside the room. I share the two moves that get you there. Neither is a deck.   📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now. 👉 https://www.reinventionatthetop.com/preorder   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21   📩 NEWSLETTER Join 192,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/   CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x   Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  3. Sep 17

    257 - Confidence Kills CEOs Faster Than Bad Strategy!

    Every CEO thinks they're supposed to have the answers. Jim Brown used to think so too, until he sat in on a leadership meeting and noticed something strange. Every time a hard question came up, the whole room turned to look at the founder. Not because anyone asked them to. It had just become the pattern. She gave the answer, the meeting moved on, and nobody thought twice about it. Except Jim did. When he pointed it out to her afterward, she realized something uncomfortable. She wasn't really leading her team anymore. She'd become their bottleneck. That single moment is at the center of this conversation with Andrea Petrone. Jim spent years inside boardrooms watching smart, hardworking CEOs quietly sabotage their own companies, not through bad decisions, but through the exhausting pressure to look like they never make any. He calls it the hero trap, and once you see it, you start noticing it everywhere. In this episode: The founder who didn't realize her entire team was waiting on her for every answer A $1M mistake at a chemical plant, caused by a culture where nobody felt safe speaking up How a struggling Canadian factory went from the most expensive plant in its global network to the cheapest, in under a year The four hidden risks quietly shaping every company's future, and why most leaders never see them coming Why "the leader goes first" might be the hardest, most important habit any CEO can build If you've ever felt like you're supposed to have it all figured out, this conversation will change how you think about leadership, authenticity, and what's really driving your company's results. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:42 Why CEOs feel more pressure today than ever before 03:15 The moment everyone turned to look at her for the answer 09:01 Why authenticity beats having all the answers 15:46 Why teams go quiet instead of speaking up 18:20 What organizational health actually means 23:28 The factory that cut costs by changing how its leaders worked 28:40 The $1M mistake nobody spoke up about 31:15 Why the leader has to go first 37:00 What got you promoted won't keep you at the top 40:08 Final thoughts and where to learn more 📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now. 👉https://reinventionatthetop.com/preorder Order the book before 22 October and get the companion toolkit plus a seat in a private live session with Andrea. 🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21 📩 NEWSLETTER Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/ Connect with Andrea Petrone LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Connect with Jim Brown  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/authorjimbrown/   Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  4. Sep 10

    256 - How Great CEOs Cut the Jargon and Lead With Clarity

    "We need to operationalize efficiencies." I've heard that sentence in a dozen boardrooms. It always means the same thing: we're cutting costs and some roles will go. Everyone in the room knows it. Nobody says it. And the people who'll actually lose their jobs are left reading fog. That's what this episode is about. Jargon isn't a communication problem, it's a courage problem. It's what we reach for when we haven't done the hard work of getting clear, and it does something for us even as it fails our teams. Say we're stopping the small business segment to go all in on enterprise, and you can hold me to it. Say we're optimizing our customer portfolio strategy, and I've risked nothing. Safe for me. Useless for everyone listening. I share four moves to fix it, including the one test I trust most: can someone four levels down repeat your message accurately in the corridor? If not, you don't have a message yet. And I'll be honest about why this is hard. Plain words commit you to a position you can be wrong about. The jargon was never protecting your team from confusion it was protecting you from exposure. Your people aren't waiting for you to be more inspiring. They're waiting for you to be clear.   📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now. 👉 https://reinventionatthetop.com/preorder   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21   📩 NEWSLETTER Join 192,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/   CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x   Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  5. Sep 3

    255 - Why the Best Innovation Comes From Employees, Not CEOs

    Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg. We tell their stories like they invented the future alone in a garage. Kaihan Krippendorff says that the story is mostly fiction, and the data backs him up.   On this episode of The World Class Leaders Show, host Andrea Petrone talks with Kaihan Krippendorff, founder of Outthinker and one of Thinkers50's top 20 global management thinkers, about who actually creates the world's biggest innovations. Spoiler: it's usually not the founder.   Kaihan walks through the numbers. Looking at the 30 most transformative innovations of the last 30 years, from the internet to DNA sequencing to solar advances, roughly 70 percent were conceived by employees working within already established companies, not by entrepreneurs starting something new. He explains why we tell the founder story anyway, because it's a great story, not necessarily a true one, and why that matters more than it sounds. If the only innovation story we tell is to quit school, go to a garage, disrupt everything, most people quietly write themselves out of the innovation conversation entirely.   From there, Andrea and Kaihan dig into what founders actually do well, creating the conditions for other people to innovate, and what most companies get wrong about unlocking that from their own employees, including an idea borrowed from Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety that has nothing to do with venting complaints and everything to do with giving people room to propose a half formed idea without getting shot down.   What you'll get out of this episode: Why 70 percent of the most transformative innovations came from employees, not founders Why the garage founder story is more myth than fact, and why it gets told anyway What founders actually do well, and why that's different from inventing The psychological safety piece most companies get wrong about employee innovation Kaihan's framework for finding a fourth option when everyone else is stuck choosing between three His concept of proximity, and why value creation is moving closer to the moment of demand The four things he believes AI still can't do in strategy   Timestamps: 00:00 Trailer 02:01 The Lego story 04:19 Innovation is forgotten, not learned 06:20 How industries shift unnoticed 08:46 When past success blinds leaders 11:15 Think inside a new box 12:33 Military strategy's limits 15:23 What top strategists do differently 17:44 The 70 percent stat 19:08 Why the garage myth sticks 21:45 Space for impossible ideas 24:55 What proximity means 27:48 Four questions for your next move 31:12 What AI still can't do 36:13 Why we trust illogical humans 37:39 Culture shapes strategy 41:07 His final message for CEOs   📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now. 👉 https://reinventionatthetop.com/preorder   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21   📩 NEWSLETTER Join 192,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/   CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x   Connect with Kaihan Krippendorff  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaihankrippendorff/    Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  6. Aug 27

    254 - The Reinvention Every CEO Has to Make (And Why It's So Hard)

    A CEO told Andrea, "I don't recognize my own calendar anymore." He built the company, the company outgrew him, and nobody around him would say it. This episode is about the hardest reinvention a leader ever has to make and why growth is so good at hiding the need for it. In This Episode The business reinvents itself; the leader doesn't. Andrea unpacks a pattern he's watched for years: a company changes shape three times over new markets, new model, new scale while the CEO keeps leading the way they did when it was small enough to hold in two hands. It works, right up until it quietly stops working. And because the numbers are still climbing, nobody looks underneath them, leaving the leader alone with a feeling they have no words for. He names the signals worth watching (every decision still routes through you, your leadership team has stopped disagreeing with you, you're working harder each year while the company grows slower), explains why this change is a different order of difficulty it asks you to change the person doing the leading, not something outside you and shares the heart of the shift: naming the loss of who you were, leading from the question instead of the answer, and measuring how many good decisions get made without you.   Timestamps 00:00 — "I don't recognize my own calendar anymore" 01:00 — The founder still leading a company that no longer exists 02:00 — You're not being asked to become better. You're being asked to become different. 03:00 — The silence around it: who tells the CEO? 04:00 — Why changing how you lead feels like betraying yourself 05:00 — Working harder as the most respectable way to avoid the real change 05:30 — The four signals you haven't caught up yet 06:00 — Naming the loss: honoring the old self without staying it 07:00 — Lead from the question, not the answer — and change what you measure 08:00 — The plateau that nothing forces you to fix 09:00 — Reinvention at the Top: why pre-orders matter 10:00 — The question to sit with: did the company you run today hire the leader you're still being?   📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now. 👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvention-Top-Playbook-Under-Pressure/dp/1394430426   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21   📩 NEWSLETTER Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/   CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x   Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  7. Aug 20

    253 - Amy Edmondson: Why "safe" doesn't mean "comfortable"

    In this episode of The World Class Leaders Show, host Andrea Petrone sits down with Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School and the world's #1 ranked management thinker (Thinkers50), to challenge what most people get wrong about psychological safety. Amy explains why psychological safety isn't about being nice or comfortable. It's about candor. She and Andrea talk through the "skunk at the picnic" story behind a failed acquisition, the real difference between blameworthy and intelligent failure, and how organizations fall into what she calls "failure theater," celebrating mistakes without ever building real accountability. They also get into how leaders can protect high quality conversations under pressure, how to repair psychological safety once it's broken, and why systems thinking might be the next big skill leaders need to develop. Amy Edmondson is the author of "The Fearless Organization" and "Right Kind of Wrong," winner of the Financial Times & Schroders Business Book of the Year award.   ⏱ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Introduction to Amy Edmondson  02:41 How Amy accidentally discovered psychological safety through a hospital study  09:51 The biggest misconception: it's not about being nice  13:45 Why "safe" doesn't mean "comfortable"  17:05 The "skunk at the picnic" story  19:05 Protecting psychological safety under pressure  24:06 Why stress triggers self-protection, and how teams can counter it  26:46 Blameworthy failure vs. intelligent failure  31:05 "Failure theater" explained  35:19 How to repair psychological safety after it's broken  39:43 Beyond psychological safety: systems thinking  42:48 Amy's challenge for every CEO listening 📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now. 👉 https://www.reinventionatthetop.com/preorder   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21   📩 NEWSLETTER Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/   CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x Connect with Amy Edmondson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycedmondson/  Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

  8. Aug 13

    252 - Why You're Losing Your Best Employees (and What It's Really Costing You)

    Losing a top performer costs 2.5 times their annual salary and most leaders don't see it coming until it's too late. Andrea Petrone shares the seven things that actually keep great people, and why none of them is a bigger paycheck. When a talented employee walks out the door, you lose far more than their output. You lose years of institutional knowledge, you take a hit to team morale and trust, and you absorb the time and expense of rebuilding from scratch. Research puts the cost of losing a single high performer at roughly 2.5 times their annual salary  but as Andrea explains, the financial number isn't the worst part. The real damage is the disruption, and it usually happens because leaders unintentionally neglect the things that make people want to stay. In this episode, Andrea walks through seven practical shifts: paying well but going further with recognition and growth, rewarding potential instead of only past results, helping people connect their daily work to a bigger purpose, protecting their autonomy instead of micromanaging, building relationships that go beyond job titles, taking mental health and burnout seriously, and making feedback a continuous two-way conversation rather than an annual formality. Retention, he argues, isn't about flashy perks,  it's about building an environment where people feel valued, trusted, and supported.   📘 PRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK Reinvention at the Top: The Playbook for CEOs to Lead Under Pressure (Wiley) is available for pre-order now. 👉 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reinvention-Top-Playbook-Under-Pressure/dp/1394430426   🚀 JOIN WCL21 WCL21 is a private community for CEOs leading mid-market companies, featuring confidential peer roundtables, masterclasses, and leadership conversations. 👉 https://andreapetrone.com/wcl21   📩 NEWSLETTER Join 183,000+ leaders receiving Andrea Petrone's weekly leadership insights. 👉 https://www.andreapetrone.com/newsletter/   CONNECT WITH ANDREA PETRONE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreapetrone/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreapetrone_x   Subscribe for weekly conversations with researchers and executives on leadership, teams, and organizational change.

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About

If you’re a CEO or senior executive, your challenges don’t sound like “I need more leadership tips.” They sound more like: “Why am I still carrying this company on my shoulders?” “Why doesn’t my top team own the strategy the way I do?” “How do I challenge the board or investors without blowing up the relationship?” “How do we build a company that still matters in 10 years, not just hit this year’s numbers?” The World-Class Leaders Show is the CEO leadership podcast built for those questions. Hosted by Andrea Petrone – A Global Influencer, CEO Whisperer, WIley Author, Executive Coach and Speaker – the show goes deep into what it really takes to lead at the top: using power well, doing the identity work of leadership, and making the big decisions that shape the future of your company. Each episode brings real CEO stories and the best business thinkers in the world to the table. You’ll hear how sitting and former CEOs, chairs, and C-suite leaders tackle the biggest business problems of our time – growth, culture, strategy execution, transformation, technology, risk, and talent – and how they stay true to who they are while doing it. You’ll use this podcast to: Get your executive team truly aligned, so you stop re-fighting the same battles in every meeting. Turn strategy into a small set of clear priorities and behaviours your people actually execute. Hold your ground with boards, investors, regulators, and powerful internal stakeholders – and still move the agenda forward. Use your voice and position with more clarity and impact, so people know what you stand for and where the company is going. Find fresh inspiration and language to build a better future for your organization, your people, and the markets you serve – without losing yourself in the role. Featuring leaders from Fortune companies and some of the best thinkers in the world (like Amy Edmondson, Adam Bryant, James Keyes), the show is known for its richness, depth, and straight talk. Ranked in the top 5% of podcasts globally, it’s followed by thousands of CEOs and senior executives who want more than recycled ideas and surface-level conversations. If you care about solving real business problems, shaping the future, and doing the inner work required to lead at the very top, this podcast is for you. Subscribe to The World-Class Leaders Show and upgrade both your leadership – and the future you’re building. For ongoing CEO insights and behind-the-scenes context from each episode, follow Andrea Petrone on LinkedIn.

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